It’s very easy to see why we get confused about emotional hunger vs. physical hunger. Our Society sends us all sorts of mixed messages on how we use food. We celebrate life’s joys and sorrows over food. When we are lonely, bored, tired, angry, disappointed, stressed or happy, we’ve been conditioned to accept it’s OK to attach our emotions to food. Why Am I Really Hungry? Emotional Hunger vs. Physical Hunger. How do we tell the difference between the two? Then, when we figure out the difference, what do we do from engaging in emotional eating? The good news is, by learning what our triggers are, we can recognize what drives us to eat when we are not physically hungry. Then, we become better able to arm ourselves with solutions to get us through the next time our triggers resurface and rear their ugly heads. Emotional eating can be controlled and changed.

Emotional eating is real. it’s a “shameful” secret many of us keep hidden from everyone. It’s a challenge to deal with because we need food to live. For many of us, it’s been a lifelong pattern and our way of coping with life’s ups and downs.

What exactly IS emotional hunger? It’s when you eat in response to negative emotions to deal with a situation. It hits suddenly and we feel like we must eat immediately, even though know we are not really HUNGRY because we’ve recently had a meal. It’s a way to push down, suppress or soothe the emotions. Some of these emotions are pain, anger, stress, boredom, sadness, health issues, financial issues, relationships, fatigue, fear, and loneliness. These emotions can feel overwhelming and the intensity could be very uncomfortable. So many times, the quick fix is to eat as a way to tame those emotions. Food is then used to distract us from these negative emotions rather than to deal with those very emotions that triggered us to eat.

There is a negative pattern of shame that’s associated with emotional eating which goes something like this. First the trigger that drove us to reach for food, then we eat (usually higher calories and quantities than we normally eat for a single meal), we feel guilt, get negative with ourselves, feel shame, and overeat again. For many of us, this has been the way we’ve dealt with emotions our entire lives. We may not even realize there’s something wrong with is because this has been our normal. We begin to recognize there’s problem when we see our weight always climbing higher or if we do lose weight, we notice it begins to creep back up again.

So what IS the difference between emotional hunger vs. physical hunger?

Emotional hunger tends to be associated with more negative emotions – stress, anger, sadness, pain, loneliness, etc. Often, there are food cravings associated to an emotion so we crave a specific food during a bout of emotional eating. There’s an intensity to the way our hunger feels when it’s emotional. It’s quick, intense, and continuous until we feed our hunger with food. From what I’ve experienced, the choices tend to be “junk” foods or certain foods to comfort or soothe the situation such as ice cream, cookies, cakes, pizza, or chips. Another thing I notice about emotional hunger and eating, I’m normally not satisfied with just one food. I may start with chips and I begin to calm down, but I’m still not satisfied, so I look for the next thing to eat, crackers, chocolate, etc. When we do this, we aren’t dealing with the underlying emotional reasons. We try to push down those feelings that are making us uncomfortable as a way to make those emotions go away. I had a pattern of nighttime eating. Until I started talking about it, I thought I was the only one with this issue. I discovered I would eat after dinner, while relaxing for the evening watching some television. I learned I ate because for as long as I could remember, I would eat in front of the television. But in digging deeper, I was bored. To just sit and watch television wasn’t enough for me, I felt like I had to be doing something else, so I eat.

Physical hunger builds gradually over time. It’s when we feel hungry little by little and it is not accompanied by food cravings. Perhaps our stomach will be growling or we may feel slightly hungry, but we will not be focused on a specific food. We know it’s time to eat, but there isn’t  an urgency to eat immediately.

Here’s some ways I’ve learned to help me get through emotional eating and hope they will be helpful to you:

1. Why – ask yourself Why Am I Eating Right Now? What are we feeling, what’s going on around us at that moment in time?This will help us become more keenly aware of or environmental triggers so when it comes up again, we will recognize it and be prepared with alternative solutions to eating.
2. Track what we eat to learn whether we are eating for emotional or physical hunger. By doing this, we will learn the pattern of what we eat for various different emotions. We may realize when we are sad, lonely, bored, we eat ice cream and when we are angry, we eat chips or something crunchy. Whatever the emotion, by tracking what we eat, we will begin to learn our go to foods for each emotion. It is in knowing this, that we will be able to change it.
3. Write it down, talk it out – look for support to help discover why we eat for one emotion or several different emotions. That’s why it’s so important to have a positive environment and network supportive, non judgmental family , friends and community.
4. Learn from our emotional eating episode ask yourself what you could do differently – take a break, 5 minute walk, call or talk with someone, write about it, close our eyes, breathe deeply, pray. Look for good, better, best solutions. Here’s the opportunity to learn which leads to lasting change.
5. Plan food – only bring food for meals, have available healthy snacks and food choices. While at home, be sure to follow an eating schedule so you don’t make unnecessary trips back and forth to the kitchen.
6. Remove temptation to give ourselves the best opportunity to get through these emotions without eating.
7. Switch foods –  should we find ourselves in an emotional eating episode, opt for better choices and switch up the food, for example, chips to carrots, or ice cream to sugar-free, fat-free frozen yogurt. As difficult as it is to quit smoking cold turkey, gradually making changes towards gaining control of our emotional eating will help us build confidence in our ability to handle our emotions without turning to food. Or, if we know going cold turkey will be the best way for us to break our cycle and pattern of emotional eating, then prepare our days meals ahead of time and nothing else.

Let’s keep the conversation going on this important topic. Are you an emotional eater? What emotions trigger you to reach for food and what are some of the strategies that have worked for you? I really look forward to learning from you!